Long-overdue photos! :P
Bye Singapore! -sobz-
Glimpse of my room... This is how it looks the first day i moved in...
One of the Arts and Sciences buildings! Cornell has plenty of such gothic buildings!!
View of West Campus (seniors' on campus housing) atop Libe SLope
McGraw Clock Tower! My favourite!
The gorgeous Andrew White Library! Transported us to the world of Harry Potter! Whee!
One of the residence halls, Balch! This is the prettiest among all for the freshmen! (i mean the interior haha)
A photo of most of my singaporean buddies! except for the gal right of me -- she's my room mate!
Road advertisements! Lots of them here! Posters are less common here! hahaa
A pretty
little waterfall we see everyday when we walk to central campus for lessons!
My chemistry building Baker Lab!
Out of point here, but this is for my les who requested for it! :)
okay, i will post many more fotos on shutterfly soon! be patient darlings/folks! i gotta rush for some stupid talk now!!
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5:09 AM
Saturday, August 20, 2005
I PASSED MY SWIM TEST!
YAY!!!! so happy!!! my pre-departure swimming crash course efforts paid off!! :D i can now happily choose my pe course out of the hundred over pe courses available instead of sadly going for swimming lessons as pe! whee!
scuba or water skiing? hmmm...
today is a great day! got my student id card (the matriculation card equivalent geez), so i am now an official cornell student!! this card oso means that i have now access to fitness classes (salsa workout, yoga etc!), i can do my laundry finally (:P doing later for the 1st time), and go for eat-all-you-can meal plans at the dining halls, and oso a free pass for me to take buses!
i oso got a cell phone! LG clam shell phone, polyphonic tones with coloured screen! it's free when we sign up for our lines! and it's quite cool, 5 of us the singaporeans signed up for the "family plan" together, so we are sharing the talktime! and so our phone numbers are the same except for the last 2 digits lolZ!
and today, the americans and all the rest of the international students are moving in!! the peaceful campus is now bustling! cars everywhere, ppl everywhere! hey hey! now i feel like i am in a HUGE university! hahaha
gotta bathe now... and then, figure how to use the washing machine! :S lolz
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4:42 AM
Thursday, August 18, 2005
I am here...
When i just reached here, i was in disbelief... Couldn't believe i finally made it here, after struggling through the whole process of application and scholarship application and then the actual loooooooong journey across half the globe!
Even after being here for 3 days, the fact "i've reached cornell, a
university in
USA" hasn't exactly sinked in yet still..
Everything is moving slowly right now... well, this pre-orientation is really meant for us to settle down and overcome jet lag so the programme lineup is not very hiong yet... back in the dorm, i have been doing everything leisurely... picking clothes, sorting clothes into "to be washed" and "to be worn again", bathing, packing (or rather unpacking as well), laundry (err... up to now still postponing it though :P).... well, all the misc stuff... i dunno if it's just tt i dun have motivation to do it faster, or it's really my max speed. if it's the latter, i'm gonna get so screwed when the term actually starts! :S
and because school hasn't really started, i still dun have the feeling tt i have entered a university already! i have been walking ard the campus these few days, admiring and gasping at all the pretty gothic buildings and busy snapping pictures of them! i mean, i feel more like a tourist than a student of this uni lor! hahaha... which is just not right, yeah? :P
Also because this is an orientation program for international students, i have been mixing/seeing koreans, hongkongers, thais etc instead of americans, and i am getting used to it already... Just happened to see a huge group of americans whom i gather are freshmen on another concurrent pre-orientation program today while i was walking... Looking at the sheer number of caucasians who passed by me, i suddenly realised i am in america! i am in an american university! at tt instant, i pictured the prospect of mixing with so many of these caucasians and i worried of the difficulty. oh well, that will come later...
right now, even among this group of 150 international students who participated in the same pre-orientation as me, i could feel i am still reserved about breaking out of my comfort zone. let's just say that motivation and ability is dependent on my remaining energy level. so in the day, i feel i am more proactive in saying hi to new faces; once it gets to the afternoon, fatigue and sianness sets in and i feel lazy and tired to talk to new ppl already. sometimes i think i am so lousy: i came all the way here and yet i am not trying to leave my comfort zone. i have to make a conscious effort to remind myself to be more thick-skinned to go up to new ppl to intro myself. well, it still works... but yet, it is still not a "natural" process for me yet... sighz...
but really, it's so easy to stick with singaporeans... most of us basically just click! bearing in mind tt most of them are guys, i can talk to most of these singaporeans comfortably, hang out with them, joke around with them, and even talking about renting houses next yr like hello on our 3rd day in ithaca! unlike with new friends of other nationalities, where conversations basically end after name, country, college, major are exchanged, and then, names will be forgotten. :P oh well... similar backgrounds and cultures make a big difference, really. who else can understand when i say "sian ah!" or "kena sabo"? i guess, familiarity is the order of the day, huh? it's such a natural instinct in human beings to go with familiarity, after all, "zuo sheng bu ru zuo shu". :)
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1:03 AM
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Pre-departure depression
I'm not happy. I'm not excited.
I realise my mood is affected not by how near i am from something, but how far i am from that thing... The further that thing is away from me, the more i am affected by it.
That's why i was devastated when i thought cornell was out of reach during my scholarship saga. That's why i was so excited when i started preparing for life at cornell. And that's why i am now miserable knowing i will be so far away from home 30 hours later.
I'm leaving
everything i have behind other than those squeezed into my 2 luggages and 1 haversack. That's how little i have left.
I dreamt of this day for so long... but now... i don't feel like leaving!
But i made the choice myself, who am i to blame other than myself?
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7:39 PM
WHAT?!
i have 1 day and 22 hours left?????!!!!!!!! -FAINT-
i cannot cannot imagine.......... the last time i had my passport stamped was in sec 3, and i only left singapore and my family for just 14days! i can't even rmb how it felt like to check-in at the airport, bid farewell to your loved ones, stepping onto the plane, having your ears pop as the plane takes off.........
as i am typing this, this particular scene in my absolute-fave GTO kept popping into my mind: the episode when Onizuka spites (oh no i can't rmb her name DAMN...) this potential movie star in his class to quit sch and leave tt town for her career, then the whole class arrived at the airport to send her off..... This was the scene i cried the most in the entire show cuz
i can't stand such parting scenes.
(AH! her name just popped into my mind! Tomoko! peng zi! yay! :D)
I dunno why i am mentioning this but i guess it's to keep you all prepared....? err.... hahaha... :P
(pardon my incoherence... my thoughts have become confused these days...)
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1:27 AM
Once bitten, never shy
Well at least, that is for me.
I really NEVER learn.
That's why i am forever tortured by panic and pressure from last-min work, a result of who else but my own procrastination.
That's why the one-hour-half crash course with my dad did not help me acquire backstroke and improve my stamina to swim continuously 3 laps
instantly. (I even changed my mind about water skiing to scuba diving the day before... fat chance now :( ) That's why my "Things fall apart" is still unread
till now except for the first 2 pages, and a one-page written assignment still awaits me. That's why my knowledge of chemistry has drained away, despite me keep reminding myself to start revising since eons ago!
Look at the countdown counter on the right. Less than 6 days left.
Cheer, ppl! Because (may i borrow this chinese saying) I FINALLY see my one foot inside my own coffin, so yes, i FINALLY am sensing the urgency to do my final preparations! Yay! -__-
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1:47 AM
PE
Initially, i was a bit apprehensive... But i recalled what i am going there for... so...
I think i shall take water-skiing as my PE course! :D shhh... dun let my mum know! :P
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7:47 PM
